Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulates Vladimir Putin on election victory

Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has congratulated Russian president-elect
Vladimir Putin on his recent victory at the polls, as hundreds of opposition protesters were arrested demonstrating against the result.

Congratulatory: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Picture: Reuters)

Mr Ahmadinejad wrote to Mr Putin saying he hoped his six-year term would end ‘discrimination and unilateral approaches’ to foreign policy, Iran’s embassy in Moscow said.

Official results gave 59-year-old Mr Putin 64 per cent of the vote in Russia’s presidential election, but European observers have said the poll was ‘clearly skewed’ towards the two-time former president.

Mr Putin, previously president between 2000 and 2008, has been prime minister for the last four years after he was constitutionally barred from standing for a third consecutive term.

During his absence as president, an amendment was passed to the constitution extending presidential terms by two years to six.

His return to the Kremlin was greeted with massive protests against the election result in Moscow and St Petersburg, his home city.

It is thought up to 500 anti-Putin protesters were arrested across Russia’s two largest cities.

In Iran meanwhile President Ahmadinejad’s position looks untenable after observers said he faced being reduced to a lame duck leader for his remaining 18 months in office.

He emerged as the big loser in elections for the country’s 290-seat parliament, that were similarly condemned as mostly falsified, with the opposition reform movement not even permitted to enter candidates.

Local media gave 75 per cent of seats to the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has solidified his control over the country’s politics and is now likely to be in a position to anoint a new president for the 2013 election.

The US and Israel are currently locked in talks as to the best course of action over Iran’s nuclear programme, while inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are due to return to the country’s uranium enrichment sites after being barred last month.